Advanced Railway Architect

Advanced Railway Architect (ARA)

Tired of laying hundreds of rails by hand?

ARA plans and builds a railway between two coordinates for you. It reads the terrain, finds a sensible route, lets you review it, and then builds it gradually so your server doesn't lag.

Features

• Terrain aware routing: an A* pathfinder searches a corridor between your two points. It prefers long straight runs over zig zags, avoids steep climbs, and treats water as costly to cross.
• Rails that actually connect: rails sit on the real ground (grass, flowers and leaves are ignored). Height changes are one block at a time, slopes are only placed on straight pieces, and curves only on flat pieces.
• Multiple tracks: build 1 to 4 parallel tracks with 2 to 8 blocks of spacing between them.
• Powered rails: a powered rail is placed every few blocks (configurable), each with a redstone block beside it, so minecarts keep their speed.
• Bridges and piers: gaps and water get a stone brick bed, with periodic piers reaching down to the ground below.
• End platforms: a 5×5 stone brick pad is added at each end of the line.
• Review before building: nothing changes until you run /ara approve and /ara build.
• Server friendly construction: blocks are placed in small batches each tick (default 48). Unloaded chunks are never force loaded.
• Full control: pause, resume or cancel a job at any time, and undo it afterwards. Undo only restores blocks that are still unchanged.

How to use

1. Stand in a loaded area (within your view distance).
2. /ara analyze (~ relative coordinates work)
3. (optional) /ara tracks
4. /ara preview to see the route report
5. /ara approve, then /ara build

Commands

Command · Description
/ara analyze · Plan a route (changes no blocks)
/ara tracks · Set the number of tracks and the gap
/ara preview · Show the route summary
/ara approve · Approve the plan
/ara build · Start construction
/ara pause / resume / cancel · Control a running build
/ara undo · Revert the last build
/ara status · Show plan or build progress
/ara about · Plugin info

Permissions

Permission · Default · Allows
ara.use · everyone · analyze, tracks, preview, approve, status
ara.build · op · build, pause, resume, cancel, undo

Configuration

Edit plugins/AdvancedRailwayArchitect/config.yml to change the blocks placed per tick, the powered rail and pier intervals, maximum pier depth, corridor width, scan budget, maximum route distance and pathfinding limits.

Requirements

• Paper 26.3 (Paper only; Spigot and Folia are not supported)
• Java 25

Known limitations

This is an early release, so please test on a backed up or disposable world first.

• Only loaded chunks can be analysed
• Tunnels are not dug, and there are no stations, signals or switches yet
• Undo history is kept in memory and is lost on restart
• No WorldGuard or claim protection integration yet, so grant ara.build carefully
• Route analysis runs on the main thread

About

Developed by FILARX & HARSH2242X (ARA Development Team).

All rights reserved. Please report bugs and ideas in the project's issues link.